


this is his love

by Likerealpeopledo



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-27 19:04:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20765426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Likerealpeopledo/pseuds/Likerealpeopledo
Summary: He starts a text to David that he deletes, then writes again, then deletes. There aren’t words; if there are, he doesn’t have them.The balance is too delicate and he’s already watched David’s faith in him disintegrate before his own eyes; the words matter.





	this is his love

**Author's Note:**

> This is my post-Barbecue Patrick introspection piece.
> 
> I wrote it fast and it is un-beta-ed so forgive the flagrant abuse of commas and semi-colons. I was feeling some kind of way and it came out here somehow?

No one in Schitt’s Creek is going to muster any sympathy for the outsider who just devastated David Rose.

Patrick sits at the counter of the Rose Apothecary and stares out at the deserted street, pretending he isn’t watching for a certain dark-haired figure to suddenly glide into view. 

David isn’t coming. 

Patrick thinks about leaving a note and locking up, heading back to Ray’s, throwing his meager belongings into his trunk, and just driving. Driving anywhere. 

Not home, he doesn’t even know where that is anymore. Patrick thought he was home, here in Schitt’s Creek. He’s actually been part of a family again, one that he made, that he carefully chose and that truly belonged to him. Patrick and David. Their store, his new home, all built on a foundation of David, and without David…

Patrick considers places he could go, runs through options that have long since expired or dried up, considering he just disappeared without warning six months ago from a life everyone around him thought was idyllic.

It wasn’t, and it still isn’t, and it isn’t just because he has no options that Patrick knows he needs to stay and figure out a way to save this. 

He starts a text to David that he deletes, then writes again, then deletes. There aren’t words; if there are, he doesn’t have them. 

The balance is too delicate and he’s already watched David’s faith in him disintegrate before his own eyes; the words matter.

Tension returns to his shoulders, to his neck and his back. He’s had a low, throbbing headache since he walked away from the motel and Rachel, David behind a closed door. When Patrick closes his eyes, all he sees is David, hurt. 

They’ve never talked about how to fight. They didn’t make rules for this. Rachel always wanted Patrick to stay and talk it out; it didn’t matter who was wrong or who was right; what mattered was that someone was heard. 

Hadn’t he heard David? 

_ Damaged goods_.

Sometimes Patrick is afraid that he’s not good at being in love, that he hides too much of himself for people to truly know him; that the person that Rachel loved, that the person David could have loved, neither of them are truly him. Or if it is him, why he doesn't work.

He types into his phone _I need you_ and deletes it. He types into his phone _I’m sorry_ _please talk to me_ and this time presses send, his finger vibrating with as much need as the rest of his body. He slams the phone face down into the drawer under the cash and practically bolts into the dusty bathroom, stomach heaving. 

He doesn’t throw up, doesn’t have anything that would come up because he doesn’t remember eating anything, but he stares into the empty bowl and wonders what he’ll do if David doesn’t respond. Or if he does respond, and it is goodbye, something final, something that says it is well and truly over…

Patrick’s eyes burn. The bathroom is dusty because David hates the stupid room and won’t go in unless under extreme duress and it’s Patrick turn to clean it and he hasn’t. He should clean it, he thinks, because David will come in eventually and see it, and then he’ll know that it matters to Patrick what David thinks and how he feels and what he wants, because maybe he doesn’t know that now, but he will. 

Turning on the water, Patrick wets a paper towel, digs around under the sink for bleach and supplies, doesn’t listen for his phone to ping with a returned message. Doesn’t think about what he’s missing, doesn’t think about what else he can do to convince David that he is a chance worth retaking.

His mom always used to say that cleanliness was next to godliness, usually in a maternal ploy to get his baseball cards up off the living room carpet, but maybe she was right. He’ll take whatever help he can get. Scrubbing harshly at the ceramic tile under his knees, Patrick begins his penance.

Absolution feels equally far away after he’s finished, despite the gleaming grout and the rivulet of sweat winding down his back from the exertion of a job well executed. His knees ache and his chest is heavy but the urge to hold David hasn’t subsided. The urge to be held claws again at the creaking floorboards of his heart and he sits back down on the clean tile, words he never said echoing through hollow chambers in his brain. They reverberate and bounce off one another; the room falls briefly out of focus. 

_ Please don’t leave me. _

Somehow, Patrick ends up back at the counter, the street outside still bare. It really is like the apocalypse out there. He stands at the cash, frozen.

He’s opened this drawer a thousand times; it’s just a drawer. It is plywood and dove-tailed joints and it’s barely any space at all but his whole world is in there; waiting. The phone hasn’t moved - how could it? The store is empty, has been empty; Patrick could have cleaned the bathroom, the stockroom, genuflected in front of a thousand altars in acts of contrition; none of it would have brought the one person he wanted through the front door.

The phone is still face down in the drawer. Patrick can’t remember how he thought he could fix this by cleaning. Can’t remember how he thought he could fix this.

_ Cleanliness may be next to godliness but it isn’t closer to David. _

It’s stupid, how much he wants to see every emotion as it dances across David’s face, even if it hurts, even if it means Patrick never gets to claim a single one of them again. It’s muscle memory, the way his body wants David, the way it aches when it doesn’t have him. Not to have answers. The phone has the answers.

Patrick notices that he’s clenching his hands too tightly and rubbing at the junction of his palm and his thumb, the way he’s always done when he’s worried; more muscle memory. He wishes it wasn’t also reflex to want to hide the things that he thinks might hurt since he’s ruined more than one relationship that way now. He’s alone and maybe he’s always going to be alone and David doesn’t need to feel this alone because of Patrick and his inability not to hide. 

Staring off into the distance seems like a good idea until he catches sight of his reflection in the store window. His eyes are swollen and his collar is askew and the cowlick that David perpetually smooths is standing aloft, waiting to be petted down. 

David isn’t coming. He isn’t here and he isn’t planning on it and he asked for space and not to have to take care of the person who actively hurt him. _ Take care of yourself_.

Patrick swipes at his eyes with a forearm, starts to straighten his own collar but stops. There’s dust on his pant legs and bleach on his button up, and he doesn’t do anything about those things, either. There’s a kind of synchronicity between the way he looks and the way he feels and he _ should _ learn to show it. It’s obvious now, and there’s a certain safety in that. 

And maybe it is safer, safer to show everything, safer to be everything, or maybe he’ll never know.

The lead weight in his stomach doesn’t shift as Patrick breathes in through his nose, out through his mouth.

He opens the drawer.

  



End file.
